Battery-powered vehicles are often used by businesses. Common industrial vehicles include materials handling vehicles (such as lifting or pallet vehicles), cleaning vehicles (such as scrubbing or sweeping vehicles) and even recreational vehicles (such as golf carts). Sometimes battery-powered vehicles are used in fleets, wherein a large number of vehicles are maintained by a single business. Also, sometimes vehicles within the single fleet have different rechargeable battery technologies (such as lead-acid, lithium-ion, sealed, flooded or deep cycle batteries).
Different battery technologies use different charging methodologies or algorithms. Battery chargers are provided that are designed to charge a specific type of battery. As such, several different battery chargers are often needed to charge different vehicles within a fleet. This can be cumbersome and lead to operator errors. For example, an operator typically uses the battery-powered vehicle to complete a task and thereafter connects the vehicle battery to a specified battery charger. However, sometimes an operator forgets to connect the battery to its charger or even connects the battery to a wrong charger type or to a malfunctioning charger. Operators might also interrupt the charge prematurely, resulting in undercharging. Or, a charger may misjudge the amount of energy required to fully recharge the battery, possibly resulting in an overcharge or undercharged battery. Such errors obviously negatively impact the life of the vehicle battery. Additionally, operators need to invest time in battery maintenance.
As one might expect, battery replacement on battery-powered vehicles is very expensive. To the extent one can protect and extend the life of a battery, the cost savings can be significant. Additionally, it is desirable to reduce the amount of maintenance an operator needs to spend on vehicle batteries.